User blog:Care Level/On Anti-Snowball, 2v1, Melee v. Ranged, and player satisfaction.
I feel like all of those things can be solved by specially-made items with big tradeoffs; items that you wouldn't get in an ideal scenario, but that function well in less-than-ideal scenarios. These items fall into a few classes: de-stacking items (that get less powerful as their wielder grows more otherwise more powerful), tradeoff items (that trade decreased effeciency in one area for increased efficiency in a more-needed area), spiked-efficiency items (that have power curves that make them inefficient, early, but very efficient, later), and anti-carry items. De-Stacking and Negative-Stacking Items De-stacking items can work in one of two ways: firstly, snowbally champions could use items that start off strong as part of their core, but at the cost of somewhat-reduced snowball potential as that item deteriorates (increasing the play room for their opponents); secondly, champions could, while behind, pick up strong-but-deteriorating items to allow them to somewhat regain relevancy, at the cost of pulling back into the game more slowly as they got rolling. Examples of potential cases: * Sanctuary: Provides resistances and flat damage reduction that decrease with kills/assists/CS. In a 2v1 lane or other melee-versus-ranged lane (read: oppressive for one party and un-fun for both parties, usually), or in general with a hard counterpick, an item like this is godsend: it effectively increases the safety of both characters in a lane, which only actually benefits the champ that wasn't already completely safe. The downside is that it gives champs with exceptional scaling (you know, your hypercarries) the means to hit their late power spikes relatively unmolested. Alternatively, if your lane opponent gets huge, an item like Sanctuary allows you to continue playing the game while you try to catch up. On the offensive end of the spectrum, take something like: * Rusting Claymore: Provides a lot of flat AD, but decreases in strength over time. * Glass Claymore: Provides a lot of flat AD and percent pen, but decreases in strength with kills/assists/CS. An item like Rusting Claymore is a risky purchase that could potentially allow a champion to bully their opponent earlier than would otherwise be possible, and possibly roll the early power into a lead -- even if some of that lead decays with time. It's largely akin to the old red pot start, except over a longer period of time. Glass Claymore, on the other hand, provides a sort of counderplay to the brick-wall approach, wherein your opponent gets tanky enough to ignore you, thus removing the real gameplay from the lane. Again, though, the item only provides an opportunity to catch up; it's a stop-gap measure, rather than a permanent solution. Negative-stacking items increase in strength when something not-desirable happens, effectively softening the blow and allowing a champion to hold onto relevancy for longer periods of time. * Resolution: Gain a stack on dying. Each stack grants bonus defensive stats, but is only 3/4 as effective as the previous stack. * Righteous Indignation: When an ally dies near you, gain bonus stats for a while. You know that feeling when you got shat on in lane, your opponent and/or their jungler is diving you repeatedly, and you can't do anything about it? You tried asking for jungle assistance, but he just said "hug turret", which is what you've been doing, anyway. Yeah. That's where an item like Resolution comes in. Each death will still be punishing, but you won't get domineered 'quite' so hard, which is cool. Decaying stacks are necessary, I expect, to stop things like Proxy Singed literally not caring whether he dies or not. Indignation, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of the "win more" class of items and abilities that Riot's been quite vocal about disapproving of. Tradeoff Items Tradeoff items, I think, ought to be largely defensive (sacrifice offense for defense), as an offensive tradeoff item would become huge for assassins (for whom defense comes in the form of either "kill this thing before it can react" or in built-in slipperiness). However, it might be practical for an offensive tradeoff item to exist, if it had safeguards in place specifically for the assassin case; this would allow an assassin to do their job (eliminate a high-priority target) even while behind, but at some cost that would prevent them from doing much else. Sword of the Divine might be an example of an item that already does something somewhat similar. An example of a potential tradeoff item might be: * Juggernaut's Mail: cheap; massive defensive stats, some utility function; dramatically-decreased offensive potential. For when the game is out of your hands, but you still want to be able to do your core job as a frontline character. You know those games where you're top, and the enemy botlane gets fed for reasons that are reasonably outside of your control, and now you can't teamfight at all because the enemy ADC eats you alive? Got you right here. An item like this removes your ability to blow up squishies, but allows you to peel and CC so that maybe the rest of your team can do work in the mean time. For assassins, consider something along the lines of: * Reckless Daggers: cheap; mediocre stats normally, but has an active that dramatically increases stats for a few seconds based on enemy champions in the area, but consumes a significant part of the user's health and disables them at the end of the effect. Is the enemy ADC fed? And you're Zed but you can't do your job at all anymore because you somehow got shut out somehow? An item like this lets you pop carries; the downside is that, after that, it pops you, too. In a 1v1, the stats shouldn't be enough to win fights (or it could be abusive in lane -- you die to huge Reckless burst, enemy doesn't, you both B, and enemy comes back at +1 kill; rinse and repeat). Rengar's Battle Roar does something like this, and it's an amazing ability, in my humble opinion. Spiked-Efficiency Items Spiked-efficiency items include the likes of Feral Flare, Rod of Ages, Tear and its upgrades, and Sunfire Cape, even though they're all relatively weak examples of such; Muramana is probably the best example, of those. In a harder implementation, they'd allow a character to essentially opt out of any chance of immediate victory, in exhange for the promise that they'll be back, later, to wreck face. In Feral Flare's case, it was abusive because of the safety allowed in doing so; clearing jungle camps is hard to stop. If anything, Nasus is a great example of this concept in a better place, except for the fact that he doesn't have any sort of cap. An example might be something like: * Consuming Flames: low base stats; attacks and spells execute minions below a certain amount of health, gaining a stack for each unit killed in this way (up to 100). Each stack grants 0.25 AP. At 100 stacks, the amount of bonus AP is doubled, and Consuming Flames gains a burn passive. When you're in an awful matchup, this rewards you for taking the course of action reliably available to you: try not to die and take what CS you can get. Anti-Carry Items Anti-Carry items are Viegar: they punish you with threat for being too big. Viegar isn't the only case: Vayne, Elise, and Liandry's, and BotRK punish being too tanky (there are more); Thornmail punishes hitting too hard, etc. This is a good class of items and kits that should be expanded. * Witch Hunter: Provides AD and MR; deals magic damage equal to x% of the target's AP on dealing physical damage. * Justice Blade: Deals additional damage based on the difference between your and your targets' kills, deaths, and assists. Straightforward enough: fuck Akali. In Conclusion All of these things provide ways to make the least-fun situations more manageable. This makes the game more enjoyable on both sides: you get to continue to play the game when behind, and the enemy continues to have a relevant opponent when ahead. 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